Temple of Minerva Medica

The temple of Minerva Medica (akin to the temple of Apollo Medicus) was a temple in ancient Rome, built on the Esquiline Hill in the Republican era,^[1] though no remains of it have been found. Since the 17th century, it has been wrongly identified with the ruins of a nymphaeum on a nearby site, on account of the erroneous impression that the Athena Giustiniani had been found in its ruins.^[2]

Its position in the , between the campus Viminalis and the temple of Isis Patricia, points to a site in the northern part of Region V.^[3] But hundreds of votive offerings, including one in which the temple is attested,^[4] were discovered in the (the modern Via Carlo Botta), just west of the Via Merulana, and this may be the better location.^[5] Some tuff walls, resembling ritual trenches known as favissae were also found there.

References[]

^ Cicero, De divinatione II.123: sine medico medicinam dabit Minerva, and CIL VI.10133, 30980.
^ HJ 360; LS III.158‑161.
^ Samuel Ball Platner (1904). The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome. Allyn and Bacon. pp. 440–.
^ 30980.
^ Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 1887:154‑156, 192‑200; 1888: 124‑125; Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Romische Abteilung. Bullettino dell'Istituto archeologico germanico, Sezione romana 1889: 278; Jordan 353; Rosch. II.2989; Cons. 305‑312